I don’t have much time home in my studio so I need to work through the new ideas that have taken shape during the past year of travel. I do a number of drawings in my sketch book as I travel, mainly on the plane to be honest. This is one I did when I was in Tuscany a few years ago. The narrow, tall buildings hung precariously onto top of the sculptured hills. So I decided to do something with the drawings this year. “Have you been to Tuscany?” came about. I drew it first. Then I began stitching free motion with the sewing machine. The important thing in this image s to stitch the background quite intensively and you can see in this image how the quilt begins to shrink as the quilting is done. But hours of experience tells me all will be flat once the stitching is complete. OK, there are lots of tips and tricks to go through to get the quilt to this stage… but you could leave the …

When I was eleven, a friend of my Mothers showed me pictures of the Taj Mahal, she had visited as a travel agent and my imagination went wild… I will never forget that afternoon its still very vivid in my mind. How could I imagine that I, a poor shy kid for the suburbs would be able to visit it… Well here I am and I’m going to enjoy every minute.

Hop onto a plane in Houston and travel 24 hours, change the time zone to go backwards and you’re in Delhi, India at a very unusual time of the morning. (2.00 am) but with a gathering of spirits in immigration, lines and lines of tired people from all walks of life, you finally do get to you hotel at 4.00 am. So you sleep a little and feel you are invincible because you slept 4 hours. I knew I wasn’t really in the best frame of mind because I was not happy with the state of my room in the light of day, or the fact that we were placed at a very small untidy table for breakfast. This one’s off the list for me. That’s what travel does to you at times. Irrationality strikes and you become a bit crabby. However, I chided myself for my less than satisfactory understanding and faced the day with great optimism. Time to explore, time to look at the Textiles that play such a big part in …

Finally winding down now that we are here in Antigua Guatemala and my group is just wonderful. That said, our feet pounded the cobblestones over 17,000 times today. I decided that we would eat at a different restaurant each morning for breakfast and our Guide Carlos took us to an amazing restaurant. I didn’t get the name of it, but I will post it later and I highly recommend it. I tried a drink called Arroz en Leche, basically it’s thin rice pudding…. Oh, so delicious and best of all, it’s just a dollar. Our Itinerary was to walk in the town this morning. I was cool and mild, the sun peeked through the clouds and sent delightful colors streaming down the cobblestone streets. The volcano is spewing lava and steam creating clouds of mist. (but I’m told its safe) I love the walls of this city, so my first photographic genre was to capture the texture and color. This is my favorite wall. How many colors. One wonders just how old the doors are? …